The fallacy of the five million women: A re-estimate

Explicit policy to control fertility in the United States to date has focussed on the “unmet need” for contraceptive services in 1966 among an estimated five million poor and near-poor women. This paper reestimates the number of women in need of contraceptive services by disaggregating (on the basis of tabulations from the Current Population Surveys for 1966 and 1967, and the 1965 National Fertility Study) all poor and near-poor women into 54 subgroups differentiated by age, marital status, religion, and color. Data from the 1965 National Fertility Study, and from other studies, are then used to estimate for each subgroup deductions for sterility, pregnancy, waiting time for conception, and negative attitudes toward and current use of contraception. The residual number of women who both want and require contraceptive services, but do not have them, is estimated to be 1.2 million, rather than 4.6 million. The fact that the re-estimate takes into account both existing contraceptive practice and negative attitudes toward family limitation accounts for much of the difference between it and the original figure.     

Income and reproductive motivation

It is often assumed that family size and income would be positively related if unwanted births among the less advantaged were prevented. But this assumption rests on a prior expectation that family-size preferences bear a direct relation to income in modern societies. Data on such reproductive preferences in relation to economic status from 13 studies in the United States dating between 1936 and 1966 do not support the notion of a positive association between reproductive preferences and income. Only when Catholics are considered is there even a U-shaped relation between family-size desires and income. These results cast doubt on the notion that the economic theory of demand for consumer durables is relevant to reproductive motivation. Rather, the data lend credence to the idea that significant non-economic influences associated with prosperity depress family-size desires among the well-to-do. Only if these influences are specifically weakened by a counter-force (such as Catholicism) do wealthier people show a preference for somewhat larger families. In no case, however, are the Catholic/non-Catholic differences in reproductive preference large. Moreover, no economic group, even among non-Catholics, prefers very small families.     

Hurricane Katrina,a Construction Boom,and a New Labor Force: Latino Immigrants and the New Orleans Construction Industry, 2000 and 2006–2010

Disasters provide opportunities to study the social and economic dimensions of large-scale shifts. Drawn by the surge in demand for low-skill construction workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Latino immigrants represented a substantial share of the New Orleans reconstruction workforce. Scholars, however, have yet to examine how the increased presence of immigrants affected U.S.-born workers in New Orleans. In this analysis, we investigate how the influx of Latino immigrant construction workers shaped the demographic composition and occupational-wage structure of the New Orleans construction sector. Using IPUMS-U.S.A. data from the 2000 and 2006–2010 periods for the New Orleans MSA, we employ logistic and multinomial logistic regression models to analyze a sample of 3,206 foreign-born Latinos, U.S.-born whites, U.S.-born blacks, and others employed in the construction industry. Our analysis indicates that the probability of U.S.-born workers being employed in construction remained stable from the pre- to post-storm period, even as we find evidence of an emerging immigrant employment niche in the post-Katrina construction industry. After the storm, however, Latino immigrants were much more heavily concentrated in occupations at the bottom end of the construction industry’s wage structure, while the relative position of U.S.-born workers improved across the two periods. Together, these findings show that disasters, like other structural shifts, can yield the conditions that produce immigrant employment niches. Moreover, our results indicate that while employment niches provide economic opportunities for the foreign-born, they can also intensify the disadvantage experienced by immigrant workers.     

Cultivating Compassion for Self and Others: A School-Based Pilot Study for Peer-Nominated Caring Adolescents

Many have called for school-based student programs that teach skills related to self-care and caring for others. Here, such a program for peer-nominated adolescents was developed and piloted virtually at one high school during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a longitudinal, quasi-experimental evaluation of the program showed high-quality program implementation and promising program impacts. Effect sizes indicated moderate to large program impacts on improvements in adolescents' self-compassion, sense of interdependence, and perspective-taking, and female adolescents' interoceptive awareness, compared to controls. No group differences in compassion for others were found. The need for more research on programs that help adolescents balance compassion for the self and for others is discussed.     

Multiscale drivers of amphibian community occupancy in urban ponds

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization has driven the loss of natural aquatic habitats while concurrently increasing the abundance of artificial urban ponds. Urban ponds are not typically designed for...     

Activities and social contact as antecedents to sleep onset time in U.S. adolescents

This study evaluated adolescents' evening patterns in activities, social contact, and location to better understand antecedents to adolescents' sleep onset time (SOT). The SOT is important for sleep duration and related health outcomes. Using a nationally representative sample of 15- to 18-year-old adolescents from the American Time Use Survey (N = 10,341; 47% female; 57% white), structural equation modeling demonstrated that late SOTs mediated links between evening activities, social contact, locations, and shorter sleep durations. Passive leisure, time in public locations, and time with friends late in the evenings were associated with later SOTs, whereas homework and active leisure did not. Parents and practitioners can use this information to carefully evaluate evening activities, social contact, and location to support healthy SOTs for adolescents across time.